I have had my thoughts on this for some time. It's pretty obvious when you look at it.

take a look at this (from April 20 of last year; talk about bad karma!):

Bush's new drug czar? http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/04/20/drug_czar/

from the article:

Walters was a coauthor, with (William) Bennett and John DiIulio (who was recently named by President Bush to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives), of the 1997 book Body Count: Moral Poverty and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs," which warned of a coming wave of "superpredators" and called for longer sentences and more arrests.

more on the subject:

Tough Guys (an eassy review) http://www.prospect.org/print/V8/30/skolnick-j.html

from the article, quoting the book:

America's beleaguered cities," the authors declare, "are about to be victimized by a paradigm shattering wave of ultraviolent, morally vacuous young people some call 'the superpredators.'" They write: "A new generation of street criminals is upon us—the youngest, biggest, and baddest generation any society has ever known." And they predict that the next generation will be even more predatory, with juvenile crime peaking in 2010.

In other words, true to their authoritarian leanings, (non-white) children not residing in private schools and gated communities are vicious animals that can be expected to cut someone's throat by the time they reach adolescence...unless properly 'broken'...the way you do to all domestic animals; bend it to your will. That's the kind of callously coldly mechanistic minds we are dealing with.

Within the category of abuse, I would include continuous 24/7 loud noise through apartment walls and floors from super loud stereos and blaring TV sets, screaming alcoholics and assholes; the imposition of unnecessary war on distant peoples and the daily television broadcast of the carnage to children and adults; schools with imbecilic teachers addicted to delivering corporal punishment to children; the humiliation of piss testing; the glorification of ignorance; and a thousand other brutalizations of the brain which so many Americans proudly and impetuously deliver in the names of whatever hideous gods and principles they hold so dear.

From the review:

What emerges from the study is an overall picture of families and society in disintegration. Some of the figures show the relationship between abuse and the deteriorating social and economic circumstances confronting the vast majority of Americans, and affecting with special force the most vulnerable in society, children. The frequency of physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect doubled between 1986 and 1993. Child abuse is the fourth leading cause of death for all children aged one to four in the US and the second leading cause for African-American children in that age bracket

Pincus’s description of the brain’s development is fascinating. At birth the brain weighs 400 grams and it continues growing for about three decades, when it reaches 1,100 grams. The impact of the psychosocial environment is a major factor in its development and maturation. This environment affects how the brain is “hardwired.”

The author states, “The biology of the brain is not shaped only by genetic influences. What the brain registers through its sensory systems about the surrounding environment is increasingly recognized as a critical factor that permanently changes the brain by altering its connections.” Synapses that are used during development are the ones that last, while unused synapses disappear or become ineffective.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/base-a17.shtml

Well, there's a lot more, and in my opinion the book promises to explains far too much for me to even get started. But I will conjecture that marijuana heals the physical damage done to the brain by abuse of many kinds, at least for those who wish to exercise their synapses. It's no surprise to me at all that Americans, in greater numbers than in any other culture, find cannabis' salubrious properties very beneficial to their lives and general well-being.

Some time ago we sought to make a psychiatric evaluation of the drug war, imagining it as a sick individual rather than an industry. Today, I think we would be at least getting warm with the diagnosis of abusive personality.

This is a useful concept if it tells us how to better deal with the drug war and how to end it more quickly. Reading about abusive relationships among individuals, I learned that one must first not accept the abuse and that a victim who does continue to accept it must discover within himself the reason for the acceptance and correct it.

I think it has to do with certain people thinking they are better than everyone....or anyone.

How did we get into the predicament of our society being so insecure, yet so self-righteous and proud?

And how did hypocrisy become so acceptable?

IMO, THESE are society's biggest problems....

I was amazed in college how older people would move into neighborhoods that had been 70% college fraternities for over 100 years, and then complain about noise in the evening. Nothing worse than some crotchedy old people that want to break up the kids' party because they're too old to have fun.

Just think about this case, some cynical old judge verbally bullying a pretty young high school girl. How disgusting. It's common sense to realize where his attitude comes from. he missed the sexual revolution AND the influx of cannabis.

I was always real angry about the drinking age when I was younger - blatant generationalism at work there as well. Many of the conflicts in our society stem from the fact that in a civilized world, the old hold all the power and the young are their servants.

I never thought about it that way, but it's true, envy and jealousy of the young are two more reasons the ruling elite want more power and control over society. We're entering a 1 or 2 decade span where, demographically, the older generation is going to wield unbelievable power and control. Let's face it, that's why we're having so much trouble ending the drug war, society is being governed by the morals of the oldest 20%.

This is a dire situation that could have fit into the works of Charles Dickens or a Bronte sister...

Should read:

Trauma and Recovery is the name of the book, and in this book she links the sufferings of victims of rape, domestic violence and child sexual abuse with the suffering of the survivors of the Vietnam War, under one heading -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Okay that's not a common accepted term and everyone understands it, for the most part.

But her work went farther than that. She examines the importance of the age and power differential in supporting the social decision making systems that leave girls at risk of sexual exploitation by older males -- and send young men off to war, which in history has often happened for no better reason than to fight for the economic interests of older males.

Hermann said that young men and young women have a common problem -- youth is often exploited and preyed upon by those with more age and power.

Now look at the War on Drugs in that context.

Are we fighting to save our kids -- or are we fighting our kids?

Decades of irrational drug-war propaganda have infused our society with what can only be seen as pure mindless hatred for anything at all remotely connected with cannabis, a beneficial and harmless plant.

People don't get this riled up, yelling nonsequitors and red in the face unless their egos have been attacked - and unless those egos are built on very shaky ground. But they're going to have to find a better way and reason to live.

We have a continuing drug war because so many people, victims of government smear campaigns and propaganda, need the drug war in order to maintain their self-respect and in order to feel good about themselves. When they condemn and persecute others they feel better about themselves.

This is what you'd expect from a dullard, some lout who has so little going for him that he clutches to the baldest of bigotries and bad mouths some good people to bolster his own ego. And now a Supreme Court Justice has fallen victim to the crudest of base instincts, enouraged and nurtured, above all fact and reason, by the US War on Drugs.

...the Boston Globe described him as red with emotion as he launched his "bitter verbal attack" -- betrayed an uncontainable anger toward a litigant that is entirely absent from Supreme Court arguments on even the most heinous murder cases.

And the whole country has gone just as insane as Justice Kennedy with war-on-drugs madness.

We've got to keep sticking it to them until they burn out. The redder and louder they get, the closer to the heart of the madness we're jabbing them.

It's in exactly the same way that Joe McCarthy, yelling and red in the face, exposed himself as a madman, bringing the end to communist witch hunts in a shameful scene of irrationality.

Excuse me for being crude for a minute, but how many pedophiles have already used this image as a fantasy?

This country is insane. In the middle of a national child sexual abuse scandal in the Church, parents are abdicating the sexual privacy of their children to their local school system.

If the Catholic Church can't keep pedophiles away from children, then what chance does your local school system have?